Best Use Of Trash In Art

Changing Index

Staff Pick

This past August, international mixed media artist Vassiliki Falkehag installed Changing Index at Redux Contemporary Art Gallery. Using organic materials like water samples, soil, and spartina grass, and inorganic materials collected by Charleston Waterkeeper — everything from old bricks, railroad spikes, and a rusty metal handbell to broken Bud Light and half-full Gatorade bottles — Falkehag wrote a love letter and a warning note on the walls, the ceiling, the floors of the gallery. Be careful what you leave behind. And, in a world where our claim to a god-given Manifest Destiny often gets the best of us, the trash-based installation was a treasure. — Mary Scott Hardaway